Hello everyone. We’d like to share some up and coming changes to the Industrial Commodity (IC) system that we had planned for this universe reset. However due to an error this wasn’t patched in at the actual reset so we will be scheduling a patch to implement the changes next week. This post will be to inform you all about what exactly will be changing. We’re also making a QoL change to BvB that will be going in with the same patch.

Why?

First I’ll give some data on why we’re making the changes in the first place. Last uni I’ve kept an eye on the IC prices across the uni and after reviewing the data we came to the conclusion that the average price for most Tier 0 ICs (such as Steel Girders and Sentient Chatbots) was far below the 100% price mark (ICs vary in sale price from 200% to 50%). This varried per commodity with the highest being Steel Girders at 81% and the lowest being Paxian Figurines at 57%. This meant that a lot of AI stations were buying ICs are minimal prices. To remedy this we (mainly enkelin) did some math and came up with adjustments to the consumption rate of bases as well as the price. This will result in ICs being lower price but you can sell a lot more of them for an on average higher price.

Let me explain with an example: Last uni Paxian Figurines had their price average at 57%. The commodity is worth 37.500 credits at 100%. The average price you could sell it for was 21.375. After the patch the commodity is worth 18.750 at 100% but the consumption rate has been increased by 110% (x2.1), which means the AI bases will likely buy the commodity above the 100% mark which will almost certainly surpass the 21.375 you could sell the commod for last universe and you can sell more of it for that price.

What’s changing?

Below you will find the exact changes that we will be making next week. In addition to these changes you will nolongerbe able to sell off-theme commods to AI bases. So a Fusion cell base will only deal in Fusion Cells and its respective T1/2/3 commodity and nolonger deal in Steel Girders, Sentient Chatbots, Paxian Figurines, Fine Space Whisky, Sub-shield Buffers or Cyborg Brigade. We are also reducing the total output of the IC system by 20% as it was yielding more than intended.

QoL change to BvB

We’ll be introducing the ability for teams to lay Small Warp Beacons into owned galaxies as long as your team is eligible to BvB that galaxy. There’s two reasons to this. First of all the only reliable way to get 10.000 range (hardcap on permanent assets) away from enemy assets is by using a Singularity Brake (or the likes) on your (usually engineless) ship. However, when you warp into the galaxy you’re (of course) shot by the enemy assets, which will likely kill you instantly. The only way to then get out of range is to ‘beat’ the server’s response time (ping) when you get back in. So your ship goes yellow, you enter and instantly hit your Singularity Brake hotkey, and if you ‘beat’ the server ping, the warp goes off. If you didn’t ‘beat’ the server ping you’ll be shot by enemy assets again and die. Now, for people that live in or near United States (where the servers are located), you can ‘beat’ the server ping fairly reliably. However, for people across the world this is not the case which makes getting out of range to even engage in BvB extremely tedious if not impossible.

Secondly, we’ve had talks about teams being too scared to recruit new members in fear of them being spies and laying Small Warp Beacons to warp enemy ships in with. We’re hoping this change will reduce this fear.

Lastly, some have mentioned that this change cuts off any chance of keeping the assaulting team from even laying stations even if they do find them trying to get out of range. To counteract this we’ll be implementing a warning shout in a defending team’s Team chat when a BvB station gets deployed in one of their galaxies.

Content Changes

* The Delquadrikamdon’s “Red Pill” form now lasts 18 seconds with a 180 second cooldown.
* The Burning and Lacerating line of weapons now impart 3 times as many Medium Fires and Major Surgeries as before, and have all been standardized to 300 range (which results in a significant size reduction as well).
* The Earthshaking line of weapons are no longer high rate of fire physical pulse guns, they now work like multi-projectile Catapults. This means their recoil, firing visibility, number of projectiles and knockback has been increased. Their DPS has also been massively increased.
* The mission “A Fair Trade” should no longer have a very small chance to give the player nothing.
* Changed the Poseidon Wave and Isvas’ayu Submerger to 5 Pulses instead of 4.
* Changed Lion Maul Tweak Generator to a Superitem. This will allow Slaves to use the Superitem.
* Added FC requirement to space blue delta fighters
* Combat Bot Tweaking now gives +1% speed, +2% thrust and turning and +1% shield recharge per level
* Removed the requirement of 20 Honorary Diplomas to unlock the Unstabilized Plasma Fusion Core missions and merged the Copper/Bana/Anaconda/MS kill mission requirements with the initial mission
* Nanite Fabrication Blueprint will now show up as ’1000 Nanites’ in the construction bay of a userbase
* Added rare tag to Twisted station kits.
* The Absentis built-in tweak are now shipbound rather than neurobound
* Base Amplifications now build nearly instantly (from 1 day) and take 3 days to activate (from 7 days)
* Demolishing/Neutralizing Blast Blueprints now drop from Kalthi Depths dungeons. Kalthi Depths previously dropped Surge Blueprints, which was not intentional.
* Minor, Basic, Std., Good, Exc., Sup. and Ult. Augmenter Fabrication Modules have had their Combonite requirements reduced to 1, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250 and 500 respectively.
* Put decay on universe reset tags on all base thrusters.
* Arctia AI name pool increased by about 50% with the addition of French and Finnish names.
* Removed second Torpedo weapon from Flyswatter Flyboys due to Torpedo rebalance.
* Rumble instances have had their lockouts removed.
* Paxian Battle Frigate has had its reflectivity decreased to ~807%.
* Antuayu’s Siege Mode has been buffed. Gives -30% Electric Tempering, +25% Damage, -25% Recoil, +50% Splash Range, -50% Resists for 10 seconds with a 60 second cooldown.
* Corrected Selenite Modulating Shield’s description
* Platform Augmentation Alpha/Beta/Gamma are now Base augmenters
* Reduced weight on Defensive Annihilator Pulse Gun (1600000000 -> 2000000)
* Kalthi weapons have been overhauled completely and have completely different stats in most cases.
* A Kalthi Torpedo, the Kalthi Fist, has been added. Its blueprint should drop from the same place other Kalthi blueprints drop.
* Mythic Defenders laser and transference weapon are no longer ethereal, and the transference weapon does not chain.
* Lyceum Offensive and Defensive Fields are not usable by Trade or Combat Bots.
* Added K.S.Victory skin to Kalthi Stinger series
* Added Angry Grim skin.
* Added Golden Grim skin.
* Added Frosty Grim skin.
* Permanent drones only accept Base augs via Astral Injection.
* Adjusted the Base Radiation Fields to give vulnerability.
* Increased Golden Man Blueprint drop rate.
* Buffed the Kalthi Armored Stinger’s inbuilt tweak from 500>1500 Shield Recharge and 50%>100% Critical Immunity for 10 seconds.
* Buffed the Kalthi Armored Commander’s inbuilt super item, now deploys a mobile Kalthi Minion Protection Drone that can heal and significantly buffs the defensive stats of fighters for 60 seconds.
* Buffed the Kalthi Wrathful Stinger’s inbuilt super item. It now imparts -90% Radar, -34% Range and -34% Tracking to enemies within 1000 range for 15 seconds.
* Death of First Born fighters now have 50% less range.
* Removed the detrimental Electric Tempering effect from the Gunner Ion Missile super item.

Next uni changes

+ Instanced vulcan bosses
+ Adjusted kickout time of vulcan bosses to 5 minutes
+ Altered Anatolia background.
+ Altered Emphatic Mother backgrounds.
+ Altered Enigma backgrounds.
+ Altered Elysion background.
+ Altered Halloween zone backgrounds.
+ Altered IQ Bana backgrounds.
+ Altered some Jungle zone backgrounds.
+ Altered The Junkyard background.
+ Altered Lunacy backgrounds.
+ Altered Mausoleum backgrounds.
+ Altered Ruby Steppes backgrounds.
+ Altered Sol background.
+ Altered Temple Ground background.
+ Altered Citadel resource amounts for next universe.
+ Altered Dorado resource amounts for next universe.
+ Fixed Hallway to Mother double boss wormhole issue.
+ Massively reduced the chance to get galaxies with giant suns
+ Added 25x Junkyard Hydroponic mission options to The Junkyard.
+ Adjusted End of the Universe visuals, added background.
+ Improved the resolution of the galaxy in the background of Temple Grounds.
+ Alien Invasions no longer happen in any arm other than the Sas arm.
+ Sas Arm Invasions happen every 5 tp 7 days, and should no longer happen at the exact same time every day.
+ The Monthly missions and their rewards are still in Subspace, all but the Sas arm missions only require kills of Aveksaka ships. The Sas arm Monthly requires kills of Aveksaka ships and Aveksaka Outposts. Allied Commendations have been removed from every arm’s rewards but the Sas and Pajca arm.
+ AI now roam in every single arm of Subspace, whether there is an invasion or not.
+ Kalthi Depths will have far less mobs swarming the higher danger factors.
+ Kalthi Armored mobs, Cybernetic Battleships/Cruisers are significantly less tanky, but do more damage. Their fighters also have less range now. Kalthi Deployers drones now follow the mobs around and last longer. Cybernetic Support mobs deploy their drones faster and their drones do more damage.

Hello everyone. We’d like to announce some changes to permanent drones that will take effect tomorrow on Universe Reset. The upshot is that healer permanent drones have had their HPS output nerfed by about 50%, down to around 23,000 for endgame variants. For exact numbers, please consult the spreadsheet linked below (which also gives some helpful augmentation suggestions). We have undertaken this nerf as part of a larger repositioning of permanent drones as anti-player emplacements, as opposed to general-purpose defense assets that often rival bases in defense utility. For this reason, we are trying to balance drone healing power to around the level that a player ship can achieve. Since endgame drones were healing in the 40-60k range, a nerf of roughly 50% was required.

There’s one other change to permanent drone mechanics that was decided on ages ago but never got coded until now. When we revamped Augmenter Tweaking, we buffed all non-base augmenters by a factor of two to compensate. Accordingly, we decided to stop allowing non-base augmenters to be inserted into permanent drones via Astral Injection, but the code for this has only just been prepared for patch. We do regret giving you all such late notice on this change. If you were planning to use non-base augmenters on your drones and have been thrown off by this, we would be happy to do an exchange at no cost to you. Just submit a ticket within the first two weeks of the universe and specify which non-base augmenters you would like to have exchanged for base augmenters (tech 10 and lower).

Greetings! We are excited to announce a new role on the Star Sonata development team. This role is being introduced to address two separate goals:

We would like to make the dev team’s work more transparent to the community.

We would like to attract skilled and dedicated community members to the dev team.

As a member of the Star Sonata Press Corps, you will receive read/listen-only access to weekly dev meetings. At these meetings, you will have the opportunity to ask questions, much like the public comment period at a local governmental meeting. In exchange for this access, we would like Press Corps members to report to the rest of the community on what the dev team has been discussing and working on. You’ll receive a forum designation to reflect your status as a Press Corps member, but you are also welcome to use other avenues to report to the community. Joining the Press Corps is also a great way to get acquainted with the team in case you’re interested in becoming a developer in the future. Everyone is welcome to apply, even if you have previously applied to join the dev team. Just send an email to jeff@starsonata.com indicating your interest and he’ll take it from there.

Universe Reset July 22nd 2017

In recent events, Hober Mallow has learned how to buff stuff. With this revelation he has buffed the strength of the Aveksaka exponentially to increase the difficulty of Subspace. The Aveksaka are now destroying the Terran universe quicker than ever before – Lyceum scientists predict our universe will end on the 22nd of July, 13:00 EDT (18:00 BST, 03:00 AET). This is only days away now, remember to pack your bases and permanent drones before they are deleted! All characters, ships, bots, and skills will be unaffected by the reset. Fortunately, the newfound power of the Aveksaka will be lost in the collapse of our universe.

SunDog60

I’ve been working on Arctia the past few days, fixing any issues with it mainly. The Arctia AI will now spawn around each room, not on top of every wormhole as they do currently. They will also spawn in a flurry of snowflakes, this should help alleviate the strangeness of seeing a random shard of ice appearing next to you. Lady Aurora will now drop a rare holoprojector similar to Lord Borean (these changes aren’t in yet at the time of posting this blog!).

Next patch, there will be a temporary mission in The Junkyard to delete those pesky Prefab Fighters from your ship until we can get an improved solution to them.

Bobbo

Bobbo has been working on fixing problems and in general improving the Seer Nanite Infusion Devices. If you have had issues with this and would like to help speed up the fixing process, the current fixes are available on test for you to experiment with!

NCCIntrepid

NCC has converted the built-in Lion Maul tweak generator on the Lion and the built-in Sniper Re-Router tweak generator into tweak devices. This will allow bots to use them as well as modernizing the ship inbuilts to be closer to what is now found on ships today, such as the Paxian Grand Reinforcement on the high tech Paxian ships. We are aware of the lack of information on the super item tooltips and we will be looking into fixing that soon.

Pixel

Pixel has been very busy yet again adding wounderful background changes to galaxys and other things.

End of the Universe

Temple Grounds

Shadow

Reaver Skins

Base Radiation Field Generators

Changes to base radiation field items, that will affect enemy ships resistances as they get closer to your bases.

Client Fixes

* Fixed a bug where buttons in the client would stay pressed if the “mouse up” event happened outside if their click boundary
* Fixed a bug where the resize border would still show when a window was focused even if the mouse was outside of the window bounds.
* Fixed a bug where sometimes the skill search bar would not reset
* Fixed the text scroll in the target window
* Fixed a bug where the “misc” type empty item slot inventory indicators weren’t being sorted properly, which resulted in them changing order every time the inventory changed contents
* Fixed a bug where the friends list would not clear when logging out and back in

Misc changes

* non bvb kits must now be within 30k dist of the nearest solarbody.
** Kits that are out of bound will be notified in team chat and are given 10 minutes to be moved back in before destruction
* Base thruster are no longer restricted while under attack.

Next uni changes

Universe Reset July 22nd 2017

It’s that time of the month (year..? whatever) again. The universe has become old and unstable. Scientists predict the precise collapse will occur on the 22nd of July,13:00 EDT (18:00 BST, 03:00 AET).

Earthforce would like to remind you to pack your stations, recover your drones and for the paranoid, dock your bots before the collapse.

We hope to see you on the other side!

Enkelin and Pixel

Have been hard at work putting the final touches to the new Station Management 22 zone. Pixel is working on getting the AI to function as desired and making them look awesome while enkelin is putting his focus on getting the stats for the new equipment just right. It’s unlikely the project will be finished and properly tested before the upcoming universe reset but we’re hopeful we can get it all done by the one after.

Bobbo

Has created a Vulture boss which is currently on test server for you to check out.

Jey

Has been working on plugging the hole regarding Base Thrusters. Before, when someone would attack, the defending party would be able to ‘outrun’ the attacking party by simply using base thrusters into the same direction, meaning the attacking party could never catch up and after the 12 hour timer their kits would go destroyed. Jey has implemented a hard limit of 30.000 distance from the nearest solar body (planet, wormhole, etc). If permanent assets go over this limit they have 10 minutes to get back in range. Failing to do so will make the station go into a destroyed state and any permanent drones will vanish. This timer never resets, but when a station has been destroyed by this mechanic the timer will be set at 1 milisecond, allowing players to tractor their kits back within the 30.000 limit and repair them. Repairing them outside of the 30.000 limit will kill the base instantly again. Once this feature gets patched in the base thrusters will be returned to their former glory.

DarkSteel

I’ve been spending my afternoons reverting the unintentional beefs to permanent drones that were brought to our attention last week. We’re also discussing further adjustments since we’re not entirely happy with the role permanent drones currently play. More about that after next week’s developer meeting.

Content Changes

* Due to the excessively strong nature of the Mastodon as a fighter platform, the fighter bay is being nerfed to 6 slots from 10 slots. The launch speed of the Bay has been reduced from 5 seconds to 0.75 seconds. There may be further adjustments to the Mastodon, as neccessary, going forward.
* The Trap is Set mission in Katur Subspace now points you towards the Landmark Drone to begin, which has had its trigger radius increased from 100 to 300.
* On The Offensive mission in Katur Subspace requires 15 Sahvitra kills, the Sahvitra will now spawn from an interval of 45 seconds (2 spawners) down to 20 seconds (2 spawners).
* Dark Kobaldstein’s Offensive and Defensive Lasers replaced with Injectors in the drop tables. Any existing offensive and defensive lasers will still convert into injectors.

Bug Fixes

* Fixed a bug where slaves would not follow seers into a warp if the seer was relying on their seer skills for warp nav.
* Fixed a bug where seers would not get the full map merged from their team if they were relying on their Seer skills for warp nav.
* Fixed 3 of the most common client crashes.
* Fixed a bug where team xp progress towards the next level would have been wiped when the server loads.
* Fied bugs where range tweaks weren’t counted for deathblossoms and the Seer jammers
* Fixed Voulge and Flamberge skin names.
* HAZMAT Collection mission in Tra Subspace fixed, Corrosive Alien Plamsa has been renamed to Corrosive Alien Plasma and will now appear as a parasite in your ship.

Introduction

Greetings! I’m excited to announce a new project that has recently cleared the earliest stages of development (in other words, the devs have finally stopped arguing over all the little details). The main goal of the project is to make the item modification system more accessible to new players, while also giving endgame players greater ability to fine tune their setups. While we’re at it, we’re also trying to make modifications more exciting. As with any revamp of existing content, there is always the danger of throwing off the balance of the game. The purpose of this post is to share our plans with you at the earliest possible occasion; we’ll listen to your feedback and take our time with the next development stage in order to avoid any unintended nerfs. One other note: while this project is a whole dev team effort, enkelin is taking point on it so any feedback should be directed to him.

Discussion of Design Philosophy

Making Modifications More Rewarding

People play video games because they are rewarding. One of the great UI improvements of the past few years was the Ship Window revamp, in which you can view all your exact stats. This gave players a concrete way to measure the improvement of each new item they obtained, and has led to an improved sense of reward. But while you may feel rewarded when your DPS goes up by 1000, this is not the most powerful kind of reward a game can offer. What we are going for is a game experience where you KNOW you’re better even before checking the Ship Window. That’s a deeper level of satisfaction compared to unemotionally comparing two numbers after the fight.

The problem with the current modification system is that most mods only provide a small increase in stats, and the total effect is only noticeable because you have so many modified items. We are making mods feel more rewarding by introducing new, powerful modifications on a limited number of gear types. There’s a weapon mod that splits every shot into two, an energy mod that redirects some damage taken to your energy bank, and a radar mod that boosts your hostility by broadcasting rude messages to all your enemies. The end result is that your gameplay will be noticeably altered (and improved) when you obtain one of these new modifications.

Stat Stick Discussion

With the addition of these new, extremely powerful modifications, we are going to be toning down another aspect of your setups in compensation. Part of the reason for this is that we would have to rebalance all existing dungeon content if we allowed everyone to get way stronger than before, but there’s a more fundamental reason too. The nerf will target so-called “stat sticks,” i.e. any item that is equipped primarily for a stat bonus it grants, and is rarely or never used for its primary purpose. In Star Sonata, examples of stat sticks include Mzungu Cloak, Point Defense Zeta, and high-tech tractor beams. In many cases, well-modded items of these types are carried but never activated/used. In a game like Star Sonata, stat sticks may make up over half of a player’s inventory. This is sometimes taken to be a sign of customizability of setup, but it is actually the opposite, as I explain below.

One of the principal facets of game design is to give players interesting choices. Should your Shield Monkey sacrifice 500 shield regen for 2000 more HPS? Should your Speed Demon sacrifice 100 speed for extra range? These are examples of choices where there’s no clear answer, and that’s the kind of decision that makes for an interesting game. But when an item’s value is exclusively based on its modifications, there’s no choice left for the player. As a Berserker, you want to fill your hull with Evil-modified gear, and if you get the chance you won’t mind a few Radioactive or Super Intelligent mods on top of that. The actual nature of the gear has no bearing on the decision, so long as it’s reasonably small. In pushing back against the proliferation of stat sticks, the dev team is shifting the game in a direction that will give players much more interesting choices, which is what customizability is really about. For specifics, see the Grand Table O’ Nerfs below.

Rundown of Changes

What is staying the same?

Any existing modified items will retain their modifications.

The stats of most current modifications will remain unchanged (see Grand Table O’ Nerfs for details)

Bindomite acts the way it always did on non-core types of gear (core types are Weapon, Shield, Energy, Engine, Radar, and Cloak).

What is changing?

Bindomite can now also be used to add modifications to neurobound, unmodified gear.

When using Bindomite on a core gear type (Weapon, Shield, Energy, Engine, Radar, Cloak), you will receive one new Primary modification in addition to a random number of Secondary modifications.

You may use Bindomite to add a Primary modification to a core item that gained modifications before this change. However, certain legacy modifications are being deprecated and will be removed in the process. The client will warn you if any modifications would be removed in this way. See Grand Table O’ Nerfs for a list of the deprecated modifications.

You can spend credits to repeatedly reroll your gear’s Primary modifications. Each time, you’ll be given three choices: pick one of two new Primaries or keep the one you already have.

Modifications that are randomly spawned on loot will only be drawn from the Secondary pool, but they won’t be overwritten when you apply Bindomite.

Grand Table O’ Nerfs

We are aware that this project will cause a lot of concern in the community. This blog post will serve as the first step of many in ensuring that the revamp proceeds in a way that works for the players. We are intentionally leaving all numerical values up for debate for now, which will allow us great flexibility in achieving the desired game balance. Here are some considerations we will be looking at as the project proceeds:

The Nerf

The Reason

The Compensation

Weapon mods only work when weapon is active

See Stat Stick discussion

See next row.

The following mods will be nerfed: Super Intelligent, Evil, Radioactive, Angelic.

See Stat Stick discussion

Large amounts of DPS, Elec, and Hostility will be obtainable through powerful new Primary modifications various gear pieces. If necessary, we will also buff Berserker Class hostility.

Transcendental and Mini mods are nerfed or reworked.

They are too strong for Secondary mods.

There is a new Primary modification available for those for whom space is at a premium. We are also considering buffing hull expanders and possibly increasing Recon Focus hull bonus.

Gyroscopic mod is nerfed.

It’s too strong for a Secondary mod.

There are new Primary mods for Engines that will make you turn on a dime, if you desire.

Resonating mod is nerfed.

It’s too strong for a Secondary mod.

There are new Primary mods that will give you plenty more Shield and/or Radar, if you desire.

The following modifications are NOT nerfed, but are no longer obtainable: Rewired, Extended, Amplified, Superconducting, Overclocked, Buffered, Dynamic, Forceful, and Scoped.

These are relatively strong modifications that don’t fit the theme of Primary mods.

Any existing gear with these modifications may be retained unchanged. However, you will overwrite these modifications if you add a new Primary mod with Bindomite.

Jey

Recent client patch reduced the crashes by a lot but there is still more than can be considered acceptable. I am still working on tracking and fixing as many of the crashes as possible but the remaining ones are pretty complicated. We are up to date on patches so expect new ones every week or so.

Pixel

Has been busy with another developer make the faction selection dialog!

Dark Steel

We’re introducing a new tag that allows items to drop on death. It’s first implementation will be on every kind of Industrial Commod. If a bot or player gets killed all their/its Industrial Commods will be dropped.

We’re also going to be making bots drop 20% of their credits upon death which will be modifiable by Piracy and Surgical damage. This should put a lot more risk on off-team trading routes.

Bobbo

Fixed a bug with Deathblossom where it wouldn’t take the range tweak bonus into account when choosing targets.

Ryan

Ryan has been working on our ingame store. Here is a preview of it while it is still in progress. Keep in mind that there are still a couple images missing and that the fonts in several spots are going to be upgraded.